We’re out for Revenge (We’re all out of Revenge)

For all he panache leading up to Liev’s transformation, it was faster than the group could respond to – Swelling muscle split skin, and tendrils sprayed out in all directions to snatch up the weathered armor that surrounded them, before pulling back to affix it around the growing beast for protection, with cursed energy providing enough heat to reshape the hot metal into conforming plate. Others grabbed hold of chipped swords, halves of spears, and the heads of axes, all undulating in grotesque, sinuous motions.

All that the man Liev ever was vanished in a roaring tide of otherworldly energy – his head could no longer be seen, reduced to two purple lights contained with a shell of a sharp steel helmet fused from stray shards. All that was left in his wake was a bulging thing corsetted with stolen metal, wielding multiple weapons in a poor imitation of some sort of war god.

“Oh, so you’re also shameless enough to steal my schtick, huh?” Paul spat, less than impressed, while his voice warbled as his own head was encased by flowing Malevolence that solidified into a grinning skull helm.

“Hey, let’s cut him down to size!” Bao cried out to rally the others and charged ahead. This time, the Oar was fully unsheathed without worry – this battle wasn’t going to be handled with kid gloves.

Jane was right beside him, loping low to the ground with her arms thickened and outstretched into the longest claws she could afford.

Liev’s blades stabbed forward like fleshy missiles, intent on impaling or smashing with pure force, but the two managed to juke and jive around each thrust, and counter with a hard slash where they could. A spinning, rising strike from Bao cut an axe-headed limb away, while Jane, bristling with keen claws and stout limbs, cut heavy gouges in several others, forcing them to retract with slightly limper grips on their weapons than before.

Harow himself hadn’t been staying still, rushing forward with his faithful steel sword, driving himself towards the heart of the beast to take Liev head on. Another axe-headed limb was coming for him, but suddenly he felt a burst of Malevolence come from behind and interact with the corrupted limb to force it to chop into the frozen soil ahead of him.

Giving momentary thanks to Trudy – who else could so finely control such matter than her? – he used the lodged weapon as a stepping stone before jumping up to slash twice, his fine blade separating the limb, before opening a long line in the exposed meat of Liev’s neck.

Kicking off the behemoth’s chest before it could respond, Harow watched the former human thrash for a second, violet ichor spraying from his neck, before it quickly resealed.

“Behold!” The thing crowed triumphantly. “See what mockery this power makes of human flesh, of its natural frailty, of its myriad weaknesses! Look at what it can do for us! Curing wounds and death, if only we let it – we can rise above the Great Spirits!”

“You’re a walking tumour, Liev,” Paul retorted, and with a wave, turned the ground under the monster into a swirling quagmire as summoned skeletal limbs grabbed and clawed into Liev’s legs. “You’ve got no argument.”

“How about these!?”

The flesh rippled and writhed, and more limbs grew back out of the stumps the others had left earlier.

Removed from the melee, Maer had been calling on Spiritual energy, and pushed it into the wind and the water, bringing freezing force that covered the beast in ice, leaving large swathes blackened with frostbite – yet even then Liev just laughed, letting the damage slough off and begin growing back as sheets of ice shattered into countless fragments.

Trudy frowned, feeling the movement of Malevolence in turn, before shouting at her party. “It’s not growing out of nothing! He’s using up his juice to grow himself back!”

“Then we either take him down in one strike, or make him burn his life out,” Harow growled. Neither sounded particularly appealing as a strategy.

“Well, whatever it takes, we’re not going to get anything done until we start!” Paul answered, arms fully waving to call more imitations of the dead, called up by the plentiful grudges buried in the battlefield. More skeletons crawled onto Liev, clawing and biting, digging their fingers into the gaps of his fused armor, forcing the monster to shake and brush off the distraction.

Liev screeched in rising fury as his bulbous, pulsating form produced ever more appendages to dart forward, lash out, arm themselves, even as a seemingly ceaseless wave of cadavers sought to impede him. What they didn’t grab from the ground as weapons – rocks, clubs, or anything else – the limbs emerged malformed, ending in sharpened bone or gnarled nails.

“To think the Menace blessed fools like you -– philistines, ignorant to its boundless potential!”

Jane saw an opening, and pounced onto the dogpile as well – her enlarged fingers slid into the gaps of the armor with even more ease, and unlike Paul’s minions, had far more strength to go with it, and with a heave Jane ripped the armor from Liev, exposing raw, angry flesh the skeletons dug into, until a geyser of searing corrupt blood gushed out, melting the horde and even making Jane yelp as stray spatters singed her exposed skin and sizzled spots on her coat.

“Even now, you carry the weakness of the flesh you have forsaken! Everything you have is better understood by me, better used by me, MEANT for me! You can all die and disappear to wherever you should have been!”

The arms flashed out in an instant, a whirlwind of cutting and tearing that the group had to back away from. Despite being almost immobile, penetrating this wall of blades, combined with Liev’s potent regeneration, seemed impossible – any attack that penetrated the onslaught was healed in moments, no matter how much Harow, Bao, and Jane slashed away. Trudy used the Malevolence she controlled to create barriers that only barely let some of the strikes skitter and bounce off, and Paul, continuing his gesticulations, adopted a defensive posture, directing yet more troops of skeletons to intervene, to take blows where they could in the hopes of creating another opening.

Yet even this was imperfect, as blows kept slipping through: a gash along a rib, a gouge across a shoulder, mounting bloodletting making blood slowly and surely drip onto the ground.

“Give it all to me! Now!”

The bleeding torso tore open from the inside, leaving a steaming cavity full of ribs and developing molars, and whipping tendrils that slithered across the ground towards the group. One darted for Bao’s leg, which he cut apart in a moment.

Liev didn’t care. His fever pitch rose to new levels of ecstasy, even as his heated skin moved from steaming to boiling over into open flames that flickered on his shoulders and the top of his armored skull.

“I am the bearer of transcendent truth! The bedrock of a new world! You, who will die forgotten, forever blind to all you might have accomplished – witness my apotheosis! I am the light that shows the way to a new tomorrow!”

A bone-tipped limb lashed out at Harow, but before it could strike him, Paul leapt in the way, holding up one of his constructs, but Liev’s limb pierced through it and even the necromancer’s armor, and lodged itself in his chest.

“Paul!” Harow cried out, but the man just shook his head.

“I’m tough, don’t worry, just get to stabbing this mouthy little jerk–”

Paul was dragged off his feet and towards the monster, whose drooling torso began opening wide.

A coil of solid Malevolence tightened around the stricken man, and, at the other end, attached itself securely to Trudy and Jane, who grabbed ahold with their arms and pulled back, keeping Paul in place long enough for the other three to reach him. As Bao and Harow grabbed onto him, their blades hacked at the tendril, which quickly grew scale and bone to cover its meat.

Maer grabbed onto the corrupt limb and, with her own strength, pulled, hissing all the while.

“Spirits, I beg you now, help us any way you can!”

Liev squealed in laughter. “Go ahead! Make worthless entreaties to those invisible things that come and go as they please! I am here!”

Harow himself begged in his mind for similar help. He wouldn’t give Liev the pleasure of being bitter.

Great Spirits, I know you chose to watch over me. What is going to happen? This is your world too, and evil is in front of us. Will you not join us?

It was then that Jane’s ears flicked in confusion, and she took a moment to look up at the sky.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s handled’?”

Then she sniffed, and her ears angled behind her, forcing her head to turn in that direction. Seeing something, her jaw dropped, and she shouted at everyone.

“Get down!”

It was more the shock and fear in her voice that made everyone obey than sense, but Jane tackled Trudy to the side, as did Bao with Paul, and Harow with Maer, all hitting the floor in separate heaps.

Liev only had a moment’s confusion before he looked up at the periphery of the battlefield and saw men gather in a line and raise their rifles. Next to them, Captain Talwen raised a sword.

“Aim! Fire!”

The single-shot guns gave a mighty crack and a synchronised plume of flames, the contents of which sailed over Harow’s party, and into Liev.

A lead ball wasn’t much on its own, even if it sheared off a chunk of flesh that already began resealing, but the following dozen made sure that it became more than a pound of flesh, and the pain that went with it.

“Second volley! Aim! Fire!”

Stray rounds that didn’t make their mark still left their trace elsewhere, blasting off an arm here or there, or at least tearing a hole large enough that it would render it useless for several precious seconds, and under the hail, Liev was forced to raise an arm over its face to ward off the rounds, and stopped trying to drag the group in.

Talwen kept shouting, even as more men filed out from the sides of the rifle group, which fired off one final fusillade. “First Squad! Second Squad! Flank the enemy! Keep your distance! Shield wall! Skewer slowly!”

Silent, intense troops slowly made their way to Liev’s sides, shields and spears carefully raised as they began surrounding the beast, which whipped around and slashed at their shields, leaving deep grooves that forced the men to keep their distance, even as they occasionally thrust back, gashing an arm here and there to keep them busy.

It was enough for Talwen, who kept ordering furiously and loud enough that Harow could hear every word.

“Keep those arms occupied! Help the Beacon and his group! This beast must be laid low!”

That was all he needed to hear, even as he got up to his knees and brandished his sword anew.

“Liev! I’m not alone! Hear us when we say that we don’t want your tomorrow! Surrender your Malevolence!”

The monster screamed, wrestling with the spears that kept jabbing it. “You blind, selfish, backwards wretches! The world could be ours! Astral energy crossed the heavens to land here! We are but a step away from dancing among the stars!’

Harow was past listening and instead reached for the Spiritual energy of his present world, letting it fill him, and this time, the Great Spirits filled him with a great soothing cold that pushed away the burning of his exertion, while his blade was coated in sharpened frost.

By his side, he felt Maer grabbing him to push all the more strength into him as she could as a priestess, and with a whisper.

“Come on. Let’s finish this worthless fight and go home.”

Harow let his teeth show in a vicious oath. “Yes, let’s.”

The Beacon of the Kingdoms surged forth, more a blur than anything else, and even with the squirming, thrashing barrier, Liev couldn’t stop the strongest warrior of this world from cleaving straight through with a single focused strike, a hero’s might made manifest, tearing the corrupt meat apart while frostbite set in deep and blackened the flaming flesh to its core.

It wasn’t a death knell, but Liev bled and stumbled, unable to focus fully on either Harow or the soldiers.

During this, it completely forgot about what had put it in this predicament in the first place, at least until it felt itself stopping with the pressure of a tether in its torso. Confused, Liev looked down for a second and realized there was still a bony cord that held taut from him, all the way to…

“Oh, looks like your grip’s slipped, old man.”

The monster followed it all the way to Paul, sitting on the ground, a hand gripping the tendril that was still buried in its chest.

Those violet lights in the skull helm blazed stronger, and suddenly Liev felt a little emptier.

“What–!?”

Paul’s echoing voice was full of contempt. “What, you forgot that we’re still made out of this stuff, and love using it? And love getting more?”

Bao grabbed onto the tendril as well, and the Oar blazed a brighter, hungrier crimson.

“How much have you hoarded, Liev?” Bao’s gaze was furious – and ravenous. “How much is in you right now, huh?”

Liev struggled between the pressuring of Talwen’s men and the Beacon’s sword, trying to fend them off while futilely trying to keep ahold of the Malevolence that made up its being, though it kept being pulled through the connection. Another arm tried to grab onto the tether, and instantly burned away from power running through it, fully hijacked and no longer his appendage.

“It seems Paul is willing to share as well!” Trudy sneered, and the Malevolence she controlled began glowing brighter, siphoning from the necromancer in turn, just as he stole from his enemy.

“I could do with some, too!” Jane said, grinning, latched onto the same elastic mass as the Archhag.

The tug-of-war consisted of one hastily formed powerhouse against four masterworks created by a nightmare that crafted them with care and intent. They had been chosen to be tools for a revenge that would never come, but that was more than could be said for Liev, who staggered and groaned, feeling what power he yet possessed continually siphoned from him – feeling himself coming apart. Every inch he gave, every part of himself he surrendered, left cracking, sagging flesh that withered and disintegrated without the fell power to prop it up after surrendering everything to it. The more Malevolence he lost, the more his body collapsed.

Liev was dying. So he begged.

“Paul – all of you! I implore you, stop! This limitless power – you’re wasting it, hoarding like this! I can bring back all you’ve lost! I can help you return to your world! Even if only in your current form, you need not be trapped here! Let me have this! Only I can–”

The four burned with the light of fell magicks, their bones shining violet through their clothes and armor, radiance streaming forth even from their eyes – and for just a moment they gave themselves to their calling and spoke, a chorus against the weak plea.

“No. It’s ours.”

The pull intensified to its uppermost limit, and with it, the Malevolence infesting a dying old man, and all the faint traces that cursed the ground for miles, obeyed the call, surging into the four monsters all at once.

Fortress Town became the center of another momentary panic, though one that was more awe-inspiring than what had happened a few months ago.

Outside the temple, Alma the priestess watched a purple pyre rise into the sky beyond the Extended Royal Fortress, where the Beacon and several soldiers had passed through earlier in the day.

She asked the Spirits for guidance, and in turn, they told her that it was a sign of triumph for their world.

Granny Panza sat at the top of her wagon and looked at the conflagration with mild wonder, counter to the murmurs of worry below her. “Typical Paul, always complaining about work up until he goes and shows off,” she thought, and smoked a pipe.

Zelfie and Constance saw workshop equipment go haywire and struggled to keep it under control. They knew it was the result of Spiritual energy reverberating in response to a major event, and swore to find out what happened.

Humei felt the pulse of Malevolence from her guest room in Forness and huffed. Bao was involved, and that meant more work.

Velstrik felt a chill up his spine as his group stayed by an underground river, and he wondered where Jane was.

Rulio and his son ran out to the balcony and saw a purple plume far to the north. They feared for the worst and began making plans to prepare yet another expedition.

The Great Spirits, as always, felt reassured that they had made the right choice.

Paul held his arms out to a campfire and very confidently stated, “I think it’s safe to say that Liev is dead.”

“On the other hand, we’ve just terrified the crap out of everyone nearby, again,” Bao groaned, while rewrapping the Oar with spare talismans, while Maer sat next to help, calling on the spirits to suppress the sword’s bloodlust, at least for a little while.

Harow laughed. “You would think agents of the Menace would glory in absorbing even more power.”

Next to him, Trudy clucked her tongue and took another swig from a flask of whiskey she had begged off a nearby soldier. “Oh, screw that. How can I even go into a restaurant and have dinner while I’m scaring everyone around me? We’re worse off than we were before.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Maer countered. “This time you have the beloved Beacon and a whole squad of soldiers ready to vouch for you.”

Trudy gave another disbelieving noise, even as she looked around. A temporary campsite had been built, and though Harow’s party was seated around the most central flame, several more men were huddled around various camp sites, conversing with each other and giving uneasy glances at them, while Talwen made the rounds to check on his troops.

“The Captain really came in clutch, huh,” Bao hummed, “Brought a whole army and everything.”

“Talwen did offer to help us in any way,” Harow noted. “I’m just glad he was willing to wait before coming after us like I requested.”

“Yeah, but they got front row seats to us looking evil as all hell,” Jane chuckled as she wrapped her arms around her knee. “How about it? Shall we run and hide some more? I’m sure the four of us could find all sorts of places to squirrel away in. Heck, Paul will probably return to his spot of the world more beloved than ever. Got any statues of you made yet?”

“Thank god, no.”

Harow listened to the way his new compatriots spoke with more worry than anything, no matter how they tried to joke, and interjected. “It’ll be okay for all of you. With enough time, we’ll show everyone that your minds are your own, and not controlled by Malevolence.”

“At least for now,” Paul responded, taking another look at his arm. The gauntlet seemed the same as before, but even he knew it was brimming with newfound power. What undead could he dredge up now, if he dared?

“Let’s be honest, we’re in unknown territory now. I don’t know what’s going to happen if any of us absorb more Malevolence. Less out in the world might be a good thing, but what’s it gonna do to us?”

“There’s going to be more people who are going to look at us and Liev and figure we’re people to be inspired by,” Trudy ruefully muttered. “The genie’s out of the bottle. They’ll either want us or want to be like us. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

“Like I said, we can run for it, if we want,” Jane repeated jokingly, as she lay on her back in the snow.

“Do we have a plan?” Bao asked. “Are we going to stick together? Or are we going our separate ways again?”

“You’re thinking too hard,” Harow interrupted, making the four turn to look at him. The Beacon instead smiled. “We just defeated a great evil. Let’s celebrate what we’ve accomplished before we worry about the next problem. If we separate, we separate. But until that day comes, I want Maer and I to take the opportunity to learn more about you. I don’t want this to end with us as strangers.”

It had been a strange few months for all involved, but here, and now, and for once, it was quiet. The cold soothed their skin. The heat warmed their hearts. There was a whisper on the wind that filled the air with a relaxing thrum, and around them, people were at ease and talking.

There was a whole lot of future for the four to handle, and much more they would have to grapple with concerning the intricacies of this world, but at the moment, they had earned peace and quiet.

“All this power is nonsense, and I’m not thinking about it anymore,” Paul declared. “I’m going to sleep and waking up next year, after people stop freaking out about us. Good night.”

“Heh, spoken like a true necromancer.”

“Bite me.”